Originally Posted by mercy
Dunno, why I stopped playing Witcher 1 after half of the village's chicks were transformed to demons. Had humor.. Never looked at W2. Maybe Witcher 3 will be good enough to play it till the end?

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Witcher games need more loot. If they made it like Dark Souls with heaps of weapons I'd be more interested. It is looking pretty awesome though…

Originally Posted by SirJames
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Witcher games need more loot. If they made it like Dark Souls with heaps of weapons I'd be more interested. It is looking pretty awesome though…

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Give this man a silk purse and he will turn it into a sow's ear.

Aww, c'mon now. What weapons do you get in witcher? Sword and Silver Sword and a few stances. I mastered it all too quickly. In Dark Souls every weapon has different animations reaching different ranges and normal, slashing, piercing, thrusting versions of physical damage. Then on top of that you can use the weapons one or two handed which changes the moves again. You pick which to use based on your environment like narrow corridors you dont want wide arcs or you'll hit the wall which will break your swing… So that's two "stances" already, if you like. But then there's ANOTHER set of animations for using a weapon in your offhand, giving you the full three stances from W1. But not just sword and silver sword plus a bunch of potions - you have loads of straight swords, greatswords, axes, maces, curved swords, thrusting swords, ultra greatswords, curved greatswords and polearms - Each with unique moves sets from eachother. Not just sword and silver sword!!

I'm afraid witcher is far from a silk purse.

I'm not saying give it randomised diablo style items.

…and if you have to grind in Dark Souls then you're doing it wrong. Maybe playing it like its Witcher and finding your normal way of thinking isn't getting you anywhere so you're resorting to your normal way of thinking in an tiny area where it works well enough to farm a menial amount of souls.

Originally Posted by SirJames
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Witcher games need more loot.

No, they need a better combat and less linearity, but loot wasn't really a problem, especially in the second game.

Loot should be sparse, hand-placed and meaningful.
Games focused too much on hoarding items tend to suck, not to mention how they usually make upgrades meaningless. Look how turning Darksiders II in a diablo-like lootfest killed completely any sense of progression and reward compared to the previous chapter.

Originally Posted by Tuco
No, they need a better combat and less linearity, but loot wasn't really a problem, especially in the second game.

Yes, I agree. At least they seem to be fixing the linearity stuff in the third game.
We will see in a year.

Originally Posted by Tuco
Loot should be sparse, hand-placed and meaningful.
Games focused too much on hoarding items tend to suck, not to mention how they usually make upgrades meaningless. Look how turning Darksiders II in a diablo-like lootfest killed completely any sense of progression and reward compared to the previous chapter.

That is a question of taste. Many people enjoy to collect stuff. Guess it's something of an instinct. Diablo, Path of Exile… they have their fans. I prefer more story over more loot, but I can see no reason for them being exclusive.

Damn this looks amazing. By far the best thing at VGX. I hope this is the game to finally convince me there's merit to open-world games, because I usually find they get stale fast. But if there's one thing CDProjekt can do, it's breathtaking scenery combined high detail and rich atmosphere. I'm ready to go exploring.

Originally Posted by Tuco
No, they need a better combat and less linearity, but loot wasn't really a problem, especially in the second game.

Loot should be sparse, hand-placed and meaningful.
Games focused too much on hoarding items tend to suck, not to mention how they usually make upgrades meaningless. Look how turning Darksiders II in a diablo-like lootfest killed completely any sense of progression and reward compared to the previous chapter.

Very much agreed on this. Heck, I get annoyed with all the loot and inventory management even in the Witcher. A few subtle upgrades to his Witching equipment at key points is all Geralt needs. Sometimes less is more.

Originally Posted by Tuco
No, they need a better combat and less linearity, but loot wasn't really a problem, especially in the second game.

Loot should be sparse, hand-placed and meaningful.

This. If there are a couple of areas that the Witcher could benefit with taking a page out of dark souls its those two. But then again linearity should be taken care of in #3…

More loot was not all that necessary in the witchers with their singular choice of character it would have also been a bit out of place, but that also may have changed a bit for #3 for all we know…

That said, Loot is handplaced and meaningful for the most part in Dark souls! you just have a larger amount of it. No comparison at all to a Diablo game look to Gothic 2 for a similar variety/handling… loot drops from defeated foes are also very specialized and well matched…

Hey I love DS as I am sure I have mentioned once or twice… But I don't want to turn every game into it! Far from it…

I get it some people just don't have any sort of attention span, so games where you don't really have to think and you get a new shinny weapon every 15minutes are great games for you.

For those of us that like to get lost in a great story, such as the reason why Witcher's only have Steal and Silver swords and have reason to collect 10,000 different weapons.
Exploring and learning everything about the world and trying to make the right choices within the game. No these are not the type of games for you.

So please, play the games made for you and stop comment on if they did this and added this. They are not making this game for you, they are making it for US.

Witcher is a game primarily about the story of a character and it's heavily story-driven. It's not an "imagine your own story" type game ala DS focusing almost exclusively on combat and progression in a punishing environment.

I can't agree with that at all. If that was so you would like the game and me not so much (I don't like diablo type Action RPGs , at all). But we have discussed that to death already

More importantly:

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I quite like that they're not going DS on this game.

Yes but where are they going with it? They changed the formula quite a bit going from #1 to #2 and put a few people off. And now they intend to take bethesda on in their game while trying to uphold the values of what makes their games special (Story, writing, meaningful CnC)… That is quite an undertaking and its gotten me a bit worried…

DA we've established numerous times your 20 minutes played in Dark Souls equates to exactly squat, so please refrain from embarrassing yourself further with your callow opinion that repeatedly reinforces this fact. Its basically not Diablo in any respect.

Originally Posted by Tuco
No, they need a better combat and less linearity, but loot wasn't really a problem, especially in the second game.

Loot should be sparse, hand-placed and meaningful.
Games focused too much on hoarding items tend to suck, not to mention how they usually make upgrades meaningless. Look how turning Darksiders II in a diablo-like lootfest killed completely any sense of progression and reward compared to the previous chapter.

Agreed. They need more loot to make better combat! I'm not talking randomised Diablo items scattered meaninglessly around, not tiers of the same sword with a little extra damage. The whole combat:items system has to be changed to accommodate loot as I mean it. Each weapon should be like a whole new character class, not just a new 3D model doing the same swings with more or less damage.

I never got that far in the Witcher games before I lost interest, so all I can really say is I was bored and therefore more anything, including loot, and less time listening to NPCs, I personally would have found more engaging. I mean, what was he? Some kinda werewolf hunter? Who cares! What is this, Twilight?! It's not Geralt playing; its ME. I'll carve my own story through the world with my imagination and let him enjoy his illusion of choice by picking either grey option and either grey weapon… Or silver weapon.

I'm kinda bias because I generally do prefer multiplayer games, but the linearity of the game probably didn't help with the boredom, either. If they were co-op games, I'm sure I'd have clocked them both, though it should be noted that my first play-through of Dark Souls was offline as I didn't have an xbox live gold subscription, and I didn't get into its unique multiplayer aspects until the PC version came out. But the combat system and the way each weapon changed the gameplay really drew me in!

Witcher3 graphics are looking awesome so I genuinely do hope I like it, but, Assassins Creed games always look fantastic in the videos and all open world and sandbox but then when I play them I get bored so quickly. I'd rather play some Heroes of Newerth or Natural Selection 2 than slog through boring combat to listen to crap I don't care about. My favourite RPGs are roguelikes like nethack and crawl. A story driven game can only be played once before you know the story, but this isn't the way with roguelikes.

It's not an issue that they just need need better writers because I also like movies and games and movies are separate. Dragon Commander was bad because, like everyone expected, it had a really average RTS with a whole bunch of other nonsense I don't care about. I decide before I pick my entertainment whether I want to watch a story or play a game. Games are all about the gameplay. What's the story in a board game like chess? Nothing unless you make one up! It's more fun multiplayer than VS AI. And if your writers are that awesome and there's a really, really good story to tell - make it into a movie where you have more control over your audience. Not have people save and exit at unforeseeable moments right while you're trying to build up suspense only to return not feeling the same.

Witcher3 is also obviously trying to be more like Skyrim by being open world(and selling way more copies!), but Skyrim combat sucked. The stealth and destruction magic were fun for a bit, but the melee wasn't half as good as Dark Souls.